On its 52nd birthday this month, the marketing agency once called Mangan Holcomb Partners looked back and ahead, simultaneously.
Eventually named for a pair of Steves — Mangan and Holcomb — the Little Rock firm shortened its name July 17 from MHP/Team SI to simply mhp.si. It surveyed its history, then announced leadership changes, new logos and taglines, and a refreshed statement of core values.
“If an agency isn’t evolving, it’s dying,” President and CEO Sharon Vogelpohl said in an interview. She said David Rainwater, a longtime principal and her predecessor as CEO, is transitioning to a role as executive counsel.
Chief Operating Officer Lannie Byrd and Vice President of Strategic Communications Kristen Nicholson have bought or are buying agency shares. And two new shareholders are stepping up: Whitney Burgess Scales and Julie C. Robbins.
“Steve Mangan and Steve Holcomb had the foresight to bring in the next generation of leaders at the agency years ago,” Vogelpohl said.
Rainwater came on board in 1988, Chip Culpepper entered as creative director in 1995, and Vogelpohl joined the firm as an intern in 1995.
She never worked anywhere else, and became Mangan Holcomb Partners’ president in 2010 and CEO of MHP/Team SI in August 2020.
With Culpepper’s specialty in creative advertising, Rainwater’s media experience and Vogelpohl’s focus on public relations, “we always thought that if it really hits the fan, the three of us could run an agency,” Vogelpohl said. “We had these key disciplines and were leaders in those areas. But that mentality, too, had to continue to evolve.”
Culpepper, who became a partner in 1999, said that for more than a half century the firm has “proven a path forward for the next generation of leaders, and certainly for those who will follow.”
Culpepper, Vogelpohl and Rainwater teamed with an emerging digital company, Social Innovations, in 2010. Tim Whitley led the startup, a forerunner to Team SI.
“In 2010 we aligned with Tim for digital, because that was the big up-and-coming thing,” Vogelpohl said. “We wanted to find the smartest guy we could find to lead that function, so we brought Tim on board [as a partner]. A few years ago, we brought [COO] Lannie Byrd on as a shareholder, and Kristen became a shareholder in the last couple of years.”
The agency now has about 85 employees, Vogelpohl said. “And the MHP/Team SI family of companies, we’ve got about 160.” That family includes TracTru and SIEQ, which specialize in marketing ag equipment, products and associated businesses.
The mhp.si agency’s many clients include Taylor King Law, the growing law firm with seven locations, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis and the Arkansas Department of Commerce.
The New Leaders
Scales is the agency’s vice president of marketing strategy; Robbins is vice president of client services. “Whitney and Julie are being brought into the [ownership] fold because of their different areas of vertical expertise,” Vogelpohl said.
“It seems like a really large leadership team, but that’s very purposeful. What really differentiates us as an agency is how comprehensive our offering really is. We want to have someone who’s a real pro in each of those areas represented in our leadership and ownership structure.”
Shareholders buy stakes in the firm and work toward becoming partners. “Sharon, Tim and Chip are principal shareholders,” Nicholson said. “Then Lannie, myself, Julie and Whitney shareholders. The difference is the number of shares that an individual holds.”
Vogelpohl called Byrd a Renaissance man and a specialist in search engine optimization, automation and analytics.
“The highly technical side of the business, the martech area, is something that we expect to grow in importance as we explore how artificial intelligence is going to impact our business,” she said.
A marketing technology stack, known in the industry as martech, uses technology to manage, execute and hone marketing campaigns. Technologies capable of measuring ad effectiveness and proving its value to clients are absolutely vital now, industry leaders say.
Vogelpohl said the leadership team is growing to keep pace with the expanding marketing landscape. “We have whole divisions of our company, such as the content studio, marketing automation and analytics/reporting teams, that didn’t even exist five years ago. That’s what is needed to be considered full-service in today’s environment.”
Scales joined the agency in 2015 as a senior account executive leading work for a key auto dealership client. She is a graduate of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and won its School of Business’ Distinguished Alumni Award in 2020.
“Whitney is a gifted full-funnel strategist, an expert on how things work together in highly sophisticated, comprehensive programs.” Scales and her team make sure “all the right levers” are being pushed to optimize marketing performance, Vogelpohl said.
Robbins, a former newspaper editor and nonprofit communications professional, was hired in 2003 as a senior public relations executive. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.
“She is really gifted at account management, brand strategy and the strategic side of message development,” Vogelpohl said.
New Positioning
National trends indicate that marketing firms offering a full range of integrated marketing services are attracting more clients these days, said Vogelpohl, who declined to discuss company revenue.
As mhp.si, the firm is emphasizing its full-service pledge with a new positioning slogan: “strategy. performance. results.”
“We talked to our clients and team leaders and managers in preparation for this,” Vogelpohl said.
Agencies can get “a little cute” with their slogans, she said, and “sometimes they outsmart themselves and end up with something that sounds good but that people don’t understand.”
Strategy, performance and results may not sound very sexy, Vogelpohl said, “but when we litmus tested it with clients, they were like, ‘Absolutely, that’s who you guys are.’”
The firm’s new purpose statement is “we positively impact our clients’ business through constantly innovating our own.”
Nicholson’s title also changed July 17, from vice president of public relations to vice president of strategic communications. “Now that I’m over both PR and our content studio, I’m more focused on full integrated communications,” she said.
Sign up for Daily E-news
